Looking for a way to bring peace and joy to your day? Seasons of Joy is my 10-week seasonal guidebook to add rhythm and fun to your daily routine. Each guidebook has ten weeks' worth of circle times, stories, arts, crafts, and handwork, painting, playtime activities and more!
Come South with me, Come right away, Your house will never do. The wind will blow, The snow will snow And chill you Through and through.
So speaks the phoebe bird in the beautiful little picture book we checked out of the library, Edna Miller's Mousekin's Golden House. It was a sweet little nature tale with beautiful, innocent illustrations in gentle, muted colors. I was thrilled when I looked on the back and saw she wrote many more than this one! I was even more thrilled when I saw that so many of them listed on Ebay.
You can read about Edna Miller here. I'm trying to declutter, but am going to have really difficult time not collecting more of these sweet little books.
We've been having great success this year using Sue Patrick's Workbox system. It's modified to suit our own needs-- ah, the joys of homeschooling!--but it's really helped settled our days.
This is our set up. The plastic boxes are for Nicholas. As he completes the activities, he takes the number off the box and places it on his number strip, which is sitting on top of the first box.
Katie Grace's box is the teal one, and Michael's is brown. They each have 12 folders. The first folder is always yesterday's marked work/work to be corrected. Their folders are pretty predictable. Michael generally has corrections, spelling, writing, Life of Fred, math review, literature (Fellowship of the Rings at present), grammar, Christian Ed, geography, science or social studies, cello practice, and scouts or co-op homework. Katie Grace has spelling, writing, corrections, math review, literature (Little House in the Green Grove), grammar, handwriting, Christian Ed or a seasonal project, some sort of geography, social studies, or science, violin practice. She enjoys art projects, so I try to throw those in there as well. It's actually less rigid than it sounds. I try to keep things fun and interesting, but they're older and don't need to be entertained quite as much as the six-year-old.
Today I was going to show all of Nicholas's workboxes, but it got to be too much to keep up with four children AND take pictures. Here are some of them though: Sewing a gnome hat. Great for small motor skills, and he was so proud of himself! You can see him wearing the hat throughout the day. Lego letters. He's a lego maniac, and really enjoyed this. A worksheet. I hate worksheets, but I'm trying to work on Nicholas's small motor skills and try to hit it from every angle. A shape matching memory game. Note the granola bar at his elbow. A magic leaf picture-- it's super cyclops leaf! This is an activity from Autumn Seasons of Joy. Note the apple. Nicholas always has a snack! Sorting nuts. He's been having tons of fun with these this week.
Well, that's 6 out of 12. I would post the rest of what he did, but I honestly don't remember, LOL! Ah, life with 4.
I'm hoping to make Workbox Wednesday a weekly thing. Next week I'll show what's in Katie Grace's "workfiles."
I must admit, I'm totally unprepared for this lesson. This month has been a very difficult one, and I haven't had the time to dedicate to researching the lesson that I usually would. We're definitely flying by the seat of our pants!
Unfortunately, I only allotted October for this unit and I don't really have time to get these. Those Bonnie Shemie books look awesome though!
So, what we're doing...
We start out by reading one biography in We Are the Many : A picture book of American Indians. I checked out several books in the Native American Crafts series by Judith Hoffman Corwin, and we're working slowly through it. While Katie Grace works on the crafts, I tell her stories and legends from the tribe we're learning about.
So far, we learned about the Pomo tribe while Katie Grace decorated a basket and learned how Coyote made the moon and sun. Later, she rewrote the story in her own words and also used a Pomo poem for copywork.
We also learned about the Ute people. Katie Grace decorated her own Ute miniature horse, complete with rainbow felt saddle blanket. The Buffalo Hunting Porcupine is a great story. She's also been working at our Brio loom. Today, we started learning about Native Americans from the Great Plains. She began a pinch pot from air hardening clay-- forgot to take a picture, sorry!-- and will paint it tomorrow.
I do feel badly that I wasn't more mindful when planning this unit. It's certainly a topic that's worthy of my attention. Ah well. I'll be more prepared next time, and maybe we can come back to it later this year. I try to focus on Native Americans in Pennsylvania when we do our state study in fourth grade, so I'll have a chance next year as well.
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Headache, headache, headache, and more headache. It was not a happy day.
We started out with our autumn circle. Nicholas and Daniel had fun using the play silks to dance like autumn leaves in the wind while Katie Grace and Michael got started on their work.
After showing Daniel what was in his three "surprise boxes" (wooden race track and cars, crayons and paper, and wooden bowling set), Nicholas and I settled in and I told him the story of The Magic Fish. He really seemed to love it. I drew a picture as I told it, and showed him the letter F in the body of the fish.
Nicholas got started on his workboxes. One of his projects was beading, and he was excited to find a "magic fish" bead in the box. The biggest thing I dislike about the workboxes is the plastic containers. We could do baskets, I suppose, if we had the money to buy 12 perfect baskets, but the plastic shoebox containers have lids, which is perfect for keeping tiny Daniel hands out of the day's work. Ah well.
As Nicholas carried on with his work, Katie Grace settled in with her lesson. She's learning about Native Americans. It's a little bit of history and a little bit of geography, but our main focus is on the stories and the arts. We started off learning about the Pomo Native Americans of California. After looking at pictures of the beautiful baskets made by Pomo people, Katie Grace started working on her own basket as I told her the legend of the creation of the moon and sun. She wrapped up her main lesson by writing out the story she had been told. Katie Grace continued working through her independent work, which included weaving on our loom and copywork: Hey-ho for Halloween, When all the witches may be seen. Some in black and some in green. Hey-ho for Halloween!
After a break for snack and to look at some art (Van Gogh's Starry Night), it was time for Michael's main lesson on folktales. After reviewing the stories he read in Cut from the Same Cloth, we talked about hyperbole and made a character web. By now, the headache was miserable, so I sent him off to read. Everyone chugged along at their work and I closed my eyes and tried to get rid of the headache. When I opened them again a half-hour later, Michael had made lunch for everyone-- what a guy!
After a little tidy and some outside play, we had read aloud-- The Cat Who Went to Heaven-- and then read about the closing of Japan in Story of the World. We only had time for a little map work before it was time to take Katie Grace over to Cochran Elementary for violin. Afterwards, everyone had some hard-earned screen time and I closed my eyes again and tried to beat this headache.
Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are has always been a favorite at our house. There's something about Max's wildness that speaks to children and adults alike. We all have an inner "wild thing" waiting to be tamed or entertained, depending on our mood. We all wish we could have a wild rumpus to work out our anger and energy, and oh, if only we could simply eat up those things that make us angry!
Likewise, the promise of home and the forgiveness and grace of a mother also speaks to us. Sendak's book not only captures the tumult and rage of a small child's world, out of control, but also the contented sigh of being welcomed back home with a bowl of soup and slice of cake when our tantrum is over.
I had the honor of teaching a co-op class on story elements the past five weeks. Using classic children's books, we explored the concepts of character, setting, theme, and plot. When we discussed reality vs. fantasy in books, Where the Wild Things Are was a shoo-in.
Like my own children, the six and seven year olds in my class loved this book. They seemed to have a lot of empathy for Max, that little boy in the wolf suit only a few years younger than themselves. They loved the simple text and the pages with no text, where Sendak's illustrations told the story without words. Seeing the book through their eyes, you realized that it was the simplicity with which Sendak tells his tale that makes it so perfect.
When I learned Spike Jonez was directing the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are, I was intrigued. I try to have some alone time with each of my little ones, and I decided that this movie would be a good date for me and my "Wild Thing," Nicholas, who just turned six. We were both excited, and went on opening day.
I wish I had waited. I broke my own rule, and went before the online review came out on pluggedin.com. I really wish I had, as the review suggests, take the PG rating more seriously.
Nicholas seemed to enjoy it. There were times he laughed out loud. He also cried and was very sad at parts, and frightened as well. Much of it seemed to go over his head, and I really don't know that he got all that much out of it. Certainly, he didn't engage with the movie as much as he has engaged with the book.
As for me, I mostly found it boring and contrived. To take Sendak's book, where the genius is in its simplicity, and try to puff up less than 350 words into 2 hours of action and dialogue almost seems like a sacrilege. In my eyes, the movie missed the point completely.
By aging Max up from a four- or five-year-old in the book to a nine-year-old in the movie, the main character looses- in my opinion- his license to behave as he does. A five-year-old can be excused for acting like a "wild thing". They're running on emotion and don't have much of an internal locus of control. To see a nine-year-old acting that way, biting his mother and exhibiting little to no control, shifts the behavior from child-like to downright bratty. I can watch that at home.
Some of the violence in this movie was disturbing as well. While bloodless, there's a constant tension where the viewer isn't sure if Max and the Wild Things are happy or harmed. Max seems unsure as well. And there's one act of violence committed by one Wild Thing against another that I found horrifying, and yet the movie just glanced over it.
All in all, this is not a movie for children. It's a movie for adults about a treasured childhood tail. For me, I'll stick to the book. The movie missed the mark.
As far as homeschooling goes, we've been enjoying reading Where the Wild Things Are lately. Nicholas and I even went on a date to see the movie! The Crafty Crow has a great round-up of story-related crafts, and I'm sure Nicholas will enjoy seeing some of these great Where the Wild Things Are activities show up in his workboxes this week. I'm betting he'll enjoy the felt jack o' lantern game from Chasing Cheerios as well.
Carrie over at The Parenting Passageway just completed Day 20 of her series "20 Days to Being a More Mindful Mother." And so, of course, I'm going to start tomorrow with Day 1. Things are a bit off-kilter around here, and so I was thinking today that I needed something to help me get centered again. I remembered this series, and decided that if I publicly make a commitment to follow it, I'll have no choice.
